Sustainable development increasingly provides new norms in the international agenda for development assistance. As an international development actor the European Union (EU) integrates this notion into its objectives for development co-operation with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. This study, therefore, investigates how effectively the EU contributes to the sustainable development of Tonga, member of the Pacific ACP region. An operational mode of sustainable development should adopt an agenda that addresses the needs of the poor and adopts the objective to manage natural resources in a manner that allows economic growth and social development without irreversible impacts on the environment. In the bilateral development co-operation between the EU and Tonga the concept of sustainable development is now firmly established as an overarching objective. This research therefore investigates the correlation between Tonga’s agenda for sustainability and the development policy and co- operation the EU provides. In the policy framework that the EU adopts, addresses effectively many of the aspects of Tonga’s sustainable development. In the current framework of the tenth European Development Fund (EDF), in particular, the EU adopts appropriate strategies for the management of Tonga’s environment that support social and economic development. An analysis of the allocation of funds, however, shows that the promised policy strategies do not result in appropriate action. To contribute more successfully to the sustainable development of Tonga, the EU needs to integrate the development of the country into its own interests. The notion of cosmopolitan moral responsibility and distributive justice offers an incentive for the EU to do so.

The issue of democratic deficit and crisis of legitimacy has been at the forefront of the development of the European project in the last twenty years. However, little attention has been directed towards analysing the way in which democratic legitimacy underlines the construction of the EU s foreign policy. This thesis draws on a broad understanding of democratic legitimacy which is seen to encompass various aspects: transparency, accountability, responsiveness and openness to public debate. It shows that the media had a positive effect (although in contrasting degrees) on the democratic legitimacy of the EU s foreign policy in two issue areas, highlighting the ways in which it achieved this. Drawing on insights from political theory, it argues that the European public sphere has the potential to foster the four characteristics highlighted above through the ability of the media to politicise foreign policy issues, which are commonly closed off from democratic scrutiny. Three types of interaction effects between the media and policymakers within the European public sphere are identified: indexing, bounding and agenda setting. Firstly, indexing captures the ability of policymakers to influence and shape media discourse in order to aid their interests and goals by communicating in a favourable manner their policies to the general public. Secondly, through bounding the media can have a constraining or limiting effect on the range of policies and their effectiveness that policymakers can pursue, even if the latter are not aware of or willing to engage with the frames constructed by journalists. Finally, agenda setting captures the ability of the media to purposively influence decision-making processes through its discourse. Empirically two distinct areas of EU foreign policy are explored: the EU s approach to global climate change and its policy towards Russia. Hence, the study makes a significant contribution to the understanding of EU foreign policy and to its international actorness. Secondly, it extends in a comprehensive manner the debate regarding the crisis of legitimacy and democratic deficit in the EU to the realm of foreign policy. Finally, it also contributes to the literature on Foreign Policy Analysis which engages with the issue of democratic legitimacy.

Since the establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1991, the European Union has quickly been developing as an international security and defense actor. However, the fall of Yugoslavia exposed the EU's shortcomings regarding its foreign policy initiatives. Its failure in the region became a turning point for EU foreign and security policy decision making. Since the crisis in Yugoslavia, the EU has been able to overcome national interests, political disagreements, and failed operations to establish itself as a powerful actor in the international community. It has been able to display its military capability as well as bring political stability to troubled areas around the world. This thesis explores the history of European foreign policy decision-making as well as the difficulties associated with its development. The goal of this research is to determine what effect the crisis in Yugoslavia has had on the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. I analyze the policies and actions of the European Union towards the Western Balkans as well as the development of the EU's foreign and security policy since the crisis in Yugoslavia ended. This research will provide an explanation as to how the European Union was able to recover from its failure in Yugoslavia by creating its own military capability, increasing cohesiveness among its member-states, and eventually improving its status in the international community.

The primary focus of this thesis is to investigate the amount and nature of influence that the United States has on the potential future admittance of Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia into the European Union. All three countries have expressed interest in EU membership and are supported by the United States in their effort to join the union. This thesis attempts to shed some light on the means by which the US has attempted to facilitate accession and the reasons for its supportive stance, as well as to predict the effectiveness of its pro-membership advocacy. Four major factors common to all three case studies are used to analyze the issue and provide evidence for the author's hypothesis that US influence on European affairs is declining. In addition to US interests and relating efforts, these factors are: candidate country background situations, the EU's position on potential membership, and Russian influence on EU decision making. In concluding analysis, this thesis explains how a change in US influence over European affairs may affect the overall power relationship between the US, EU and Russia, as the question of EU membership for the cases studied is about much more than simply EU expansion.

No longer a distant frontier, the Arctic has become a space of concerns and opportunities for the people living in the region, as well as for external actors, due to climate change and increasing possibilities to further exploit Arctic resources. The EU is present in the region through its Arctic Council Member States, namely Sweden, Finland, and the Kingdom of Denmark (by virtue of Greenland and the Faroe Islands). However, the EU often appears to struggle to achieve the necessary legitimacy, identity, and strategies to be accepted as a credible Arctic actor. By combining the international relations theories of constructivism and critical geopolitics, this dissertation investigates the EU’s ‘actorness’, defined as an actor’s capacity to imagine its own and others’ roles in a policy context. Furthermore, this research proposes a revised use of the concept of actorness as a tool to understand the formulation of foreign policies, rather than their impact or effectiveness. Through extensive document analysis and the conduction of qualitative interviews, this study sheds light on how the actorness of the EU Commission, the EU Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the EU Arctic Member States coherently constructs the EU’s capabilities to participate in Arctic governance, highlighting the convergence or divergence of their Arctic policies. This dissertation’s results show that the EU’s limited role is coherent with its Arctic Member States’ support for intergovernmental governance, and with the contradictory goals that all of them share –such as balance between environmental protection, exploitation of energy resources, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights. These ii conclusions suggest that Arctic governance is a complex matter for both the EU Institutions and the Arctic Member States, whose primary responsibility for the region’s welfare also suffers from fragmented visions of their roles in, and objectives for, the Arctic.

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of small states in the context of the European Union. It principally focuses on strategies of small states which help them to pursue their national interests in the European Union. Austria has been chosen as a case for the practical purposes of this diploma thesis. The theoretical part introduces the concept of small state in general, characterizes this specific term in the structures of the European Union and points out to the weaknesses of small countries, which may reduce their foreign-policy activism. Subsequently, the text analyses the strategies of small states which are used for the promotion of national interests in the European Union, or more precisely in the Council of the European Union. A practical section of the thesis deals with Austrian foreign policy engagement in three key political issues of the Alpine republic. The analysis of the Austrian initiatives during the years 1995-2015 has identified the strategies which Austria used to pursue its national positions in the European Union.

Although the EU foreign policy is guided by the principle of coherence, previous research describes how cases of incoherence prevail. This thesis aims to contribute to the literature on under which conditions the EU acts coherently and not. It does so by studying the EU’s foreign policy making in Venezuela post the contested presidential elections in 2018 that left the country with two self-proclaimed presidents and a deteriorating democracy. What is puzzling about the EU’s response is that it imposed sanctions in a coherent manner but acted incoherently regarding the issue of presidential recognition. The outcomes hence varied within the same empirical context, which calls for further analysis of what caused this variation. The thesis utilizes a most similar systems design and qualitative content analysis of official EU-documents and news reporting of the empirical events to analyze if and how three variables - the level of institutionalization and socialization, and interests - were referred to by the actors involved in EU foreign policy making as reasons for its coherence and incoherence respectively. The findings indicate that all three variables were relevant for determining the in/coherence of the respective outcome, and that they reinforced each other to some extent.

La diversité des accords bilatéraux a constitué un moyen pour l'Union européenne d'étendre ses compétences externes. Cela rend compte du volontarisme mais surtout du pragmatisme de son action extérieure, ce qui n'est pas sans poser de problèmes.La mise en cohérence des accords bilatéraux devient alors une exigence impérieuse. Cette rationalisation des accords devra être confortée par un schéma institutionnel rénové autant que par la reformulation synthétique des fondements juridiques de la compétence externe de l'Union européenne. / The different bilateral agreement is a tool for the European Union to wide its external competences. This illustrates it voluntarism but even more it pragmatism of it external action, what is not without raise problems.The harmonization of bilateral agreements is a very strong need. This rationalization should be hold by an institutional scheme and by a reformulation of legal basis.

For the past two decades, statebuilding has been the object of a growing attention from practitioners and scholars alike. ‘International statebuilding’, as its dominant approach or model guiding the practices of national and international actors, has sparked numerous discussions and debates, mostly around its effectiveness (i.e. if it works) and deficiencies (i.e. why it often fails). Surprisingly, little efforts have been made to investigate what international statebuilding, in the multiple ways it is mobilized by various actors, actually produces on the political dynamics of the ‘fragile’ contexts it is supposed to support and reinforce. Using an instrumentation perspective, this dissertation addresses this gap by exploring the relationship between the micro-dynamics of the uses of international statebuilding instruments and the fragility of contexts. This exploration is articulated around five essays and as many angles to this relationship. Using the case of Hamas, Essay I explores the European Union’s (EU) terrorist labelling policy by questioning the nature and modalities of the enlisting process, its use as foreign policy tool and its consequences on its other agendas, especially its international statebuilding efforts in Palestine. Essay II examines a Belgian good governance incentive mechanism and sheds the light on the tension between the claimed apolitical and objective nature of the instrument and the politicization potential embedded in its design and modalities, naturally leading to a convoluted implementation. Essay III analyses the localization dynamics of transitional justice in Burundi and unveils the nature, diversity and rationale behind transitional justice subversion techniques mobilized by national and international actors, which have produced a triple form of injustice. Essay IV widens this scope in Burundi, developing the argument that the authoritarian trend observed in the 2010-2015 period did not only occur against international statebuilding but also through self-reinforcing subversion tactics of its appropriation. Finally, essay V deepens the reflection on appropriation by attempting to build a theory of regime consolidation through international statebuilding subversion tactics. Overall, the incremental theory building reflection of the essays converges towards the assembling of a comprehensive framework of the in-betweens of the normative diffusion of liberal democracy, the inner-workings of its operationalization through the resort to the international statebuilding instrument and the intermediary constraints or objectives of actors not only interfering with its genuine realization but also contributing to its antipode of regime consolidation, conflict dynamics and authoritarianism. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished